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Manufacturing consent

Cambria

In response to the letter questioning CNN’s blasé Tea Bag protest coverage (“CNN got it wrong,” Sept. 17) well, they are Cable Nitwit News. Fox News, however, has a vested economic and political interest in the Tea Bag movement and therefore posts “uplifting or positive” articles about these “grassroots” protests.

Fox News conceived, promoted, and scripted the Tea Bag protest movement. Glenn Beck sponsored and appeared at Tea Bag protests including those in Texas and on Sept. 12 in Washington.Fox News is in the business of creating the news they report and from which they profit.

There are clear differences between the Tea Bag and Vietnam war protests of the ‘60s: Tea Baggers carried loaded weapons and waved corporate signs at public events, not flowers. In the ‘60s, peace officers, not the demonstrators, were armed and business did not facilitate the protests.

We are witnessing not freedom of speech but intimidation by mob rule, displays of weapons and dogmatic nonsense scripted by corporate money and Fox News. There is little “uplifting or positive” about the corporate packaging and sale of public opinion.

Fox News turned away as people who wore “wrong” T-shirts or the “wrong” mothers of fallen soldiers were expelled from Bush events, yet Fox will not seriously question pig-headed Tea Bag louts who carry loaded weapons in the same room as our president. My president.

Yes, people are fearful, scared, and feel marginalized.Fox News is manipulating these fears in ways that recall the inception of those nightmare mobs of the 1930s; the ones who wore shirts the same color as wet tea.